Hot damn. "But I swear it was there before" wouldn't help him, would it?

The narration in this story is really well done. Some of the sentences ('That would have been satisfyingly melodramatic') have that perfect, self-contained rhythm to them that makes me wish I'd written them. It reminds me of a Edgar Allen Poe story, somewhat because of the narration but mostly in the ending, where the reader is left wondering if the statue of Laura was ever there at all.

I think my only criticism is that I'm not sure exactly what happened in the ending, but on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that it's meant to be ambiguous.